AFL champion Eddie Betts has posted security camera footage of a vile racist attack outside his Adelaide home, while his children were playing basketball in their yard.
The Crows and Blues legend posted the footage on Instagram, showing a car slowly driving down the street outside his home before someone in the car yells the N-word four times as they pass.
A second angle of the footage shows children playing in the yard as the attack happens.
“Aboriginal kids deserve to be able to play safely, free from racism and abuse over the fence,” Betts wrote on the post.
“We are not even safe in our own homes. If you know who this is please let them know that I’m open to having a chat about how much this hurts our kids.”
Betts, a fan favourite who played 350 games across a 16-year career, has been the target of racism in the past, including having a banana thrown at him from the crowd during a match in 2016.
ABC presenter and former Adelaide footballer Tony Armstrong said on News Breakfast he was upset but not shocked by the attack.
“We talk about shock, horror, all this kind of stuff. I’m not shocked. I’m not shocked that it’s happening,” Armstrong said.
“I’m more disappointed that people think that this doesn’t happen and that this is out of the blue.
“Every day you walk out of the house, you have the hard hat on, going out into public, the same way people go onto social media and feel like it’s a war zone, I don’t know what I’m going to cop. Anything could happen.”
Armstrong said the footage of the children running from the backyard was particularly harrowing.
“This is in the home,” he said.
“This is in the home, over the fence and we saw the reaction of the kids. Running inside. You’re telling me they don’t have PTSD?”
Armstrong said Betts, who is known for trying to educate people who make racist remarks, was well within in his rights to be furious.
“[If Betts was to express anger] there are people who will sit here going ‘why is he reacting like that? He’s got to be the bigger person’. He’s had bananas thrown at him and he still fronts up,” Armstrong said.
“He wants to extend the olive branch. He’s always the one who is taking the higher ground and he’s well within his rights to go, nah, that’s enough.”
ABC
Sports content to make you think… or allow you not to. A newsletter delivered each Friday.
Source: AFL NEWS ABC
